268 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 



The valley beyond this point preserves a considerable expanse, vary- 

 ing with the structure of the mountains, which sometimes jut out in hard 

 black masses, contracting the river, but the bed continues pebbly and un- 

 hampered by rocks. The near cliffs on each side rise to about sixteen 

 thousand feet, and are entirely bare, the snow resting at twenty thousand 

 feet upon southern aspects, and except in hollows, not greatly lower on 

 shaded sides. 



At the village of Rangrit, two days journey about Ddnkar, the bason 

 of the river has a fine spread, and is here intersected by sandy islets, 

 bearing Tamarisk bushes and a turfy vegetation, whereon the Hocks feed 

 in winter by scraping through the snow. Tiie country has the same 

 arid complexion, and encroaching barrenness alone marks the course of 

 the valley, while gleams of the snowy frontier of Rupshu are seen through 

 the defiles of torrents, and a sharper section of the mountains foretells 

 approach to its recesses. The cultivable step is greatest upon the right 

 bank, the cliff of which, on both sides, from one to two hundred feet high, 

 is worn into pillars like gigantic minarets. Their composition is an aggre- 

 gate of gravel, pebbles, or calcareous rubble; the left alluvial sediment of 

 the river baked to a rugged hardness by the sun's rays, and tapering into 

 cones which are frequently crowned by a flat stone like an entablature; 

 their bases eaten away till they fall within the perpendicular, and altoge- 

 ther so frail as to appear to the spectator who passes them, an impending 

 danger which hastens on his steps ; yet they stand erect, crumbling only 

 at their surface, and, subsiding imperceptibly to the surrounding level, 

 vanish amidst their own ruins, from which others again take their rise, 

 and in their slow formation and slower decay, they record long periods of 

 time, being the last remains of a bank or entire section that has thus worn 

 away. These groupes of tumuli which are often left insulated upon the 

 steepest slopes of the mountains, where all around is uniformly smooth 

 and bare of vegetation, are viewed with timid curiosity by the traveller, 



